I have just bought and install an RTX 3060 for a headless server running Ubuntu Server 20.04. I wanted to use nvidia-smi to check GPU load/temperature so I followed this post, running
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:graphics-drivers/ppa
sudo apt update
sudo apt-get install ubuntu-drivers-common
sudo ubuntu-drivers autoinstall
Since doing this my ssh connection kept dying after several minutes of connection. I soon figured by connecting a monitor that my server no longer displayed a CLI but the Gnome login screen and I was losing connection when the server fell to sleep. I can only assume this was added as a dependency when installing the Nvidia drivers.
How do I remove all traces of Gnome desktop and return to a completely headless server?
How can I install nvidia-smi without Gnome desktop?
Non-essential details:
I plan to use the graphics card for deep learning, installing CUDA in Docker containers only.
